We are proud to have one of the richest, most intelligent comments sections of any economics and policy blog. As our readership gets larger and new people join the discussion, however, we have to have a few rules:

1. No profanity.

2. No attacks or insults aimed at other commenters. Calling a public official an idiot is one thing; calling someone who just wrote a comment an idiot is another.

3. No attacks or insults aimed at entire categories of people based on race, gender, religion, national origin or identity, or something similar.

4. No using  multiple identities to agree with yourself and attack other people.

5. Comments must be relevant to the discussion and must be in English so that other people reading the blog can read them.

If I see comments falling into these categories, I will delete them. If the same person persists in violating these policies, I will do what I can to block him or her. I am also adding filters on a few words to flag comments for moderation.

Also note that we use a spam filter which occasionally traps legitimate comments as spam.